Alix's reflection post

I think that we shouldn't do this project again. It eventually became a hassle. We had to write reviews on the exact same thing we had just learned. The problem with blogging was that it was slightly irritating. It was easy to comment, but difficult to blog, because there wasn't much stuff to talk about to make a blog post that was more than 2 paragraphs. There was also the fact that you would have to check the blog everyday to know if you were the one blogging (Though I must admit, I personally depended on friends for that). I also didn't like the fact that although it was started off to replace our Moodle, it didn't help us with worksheets or study notes, since it only (occasionaly) gave links to the assignments on Moodle. I did like the fact that it let me see what the 8th and 6th graders were doing. All in all, this is not something I'd like to do again.

May 18, 2010

Hi everyone, I will be talking about the class of May 18, 2010. So, today we started using the microscopes to see cells and we started the cell lab.


This cell lab had a very specific way to see the cells. You had to first rub the inside of your mouth with a toothpick. Then you pour a couple drops of Methyl blue onto a glass slide. Then you placed the cells in the Methyl blue and stirred it with the toothpick. You placed the cover slip (a plastic slip) at an acute angle to the glass slide and you dropped it. If you did this correctly, then the Methyl blue would spread across the cover slip and leave no air bubbles. We drew pictures of our cheek cells with magnifications of 40 & 100, although some people had a microscope with more lenses, who could see at a whopping magnification of 400 times. We could see the nucleus, cytoplasm, mitochondria, and cell membrane of the cell. Some of us managed to get onto the second step, which involved seeing onion cells, but I personally didn't see what they were like.

We also spent some time talking about the field trip to "Bodies Revealed". As you probably all know, "Bodies Revealed" is an exhibit full of the bodies of people who donated themselves to the cause. You can see all sorts of human parts, such as the lungs of a smoker, the brain, and even things such a baby in a bottle. Don't worry, all of the babies died of complications. None came from abortions. That's pretty much it. Thanks!



The next scribe is Noam for the trip, Bryce for the class.

Alix's reflection post

This project was unique. I can't say I liked it, but I can't say it was boring. The problem with the interest level of the blog was that it was just a review of things we had just learned. The other blogs were slightly difficult to understand, because the other authors would often add information about the topics they had learned before, so we would have to go and check up the other topics, then others, and more. The hardest part of blogging was when Blogger would malfunction and we would have to rewrite the entire comment/scribe post.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Today, in science, we started something completely unorthodox, but very fun. We created superheros on this site: http://www.ugo.com/channels/comics/heromachine2/heroMachine2.asp
This is a very easy site to use and has thousands of combinations. In a couple of minutes, you can bang out a character. The lab was to make a science superhero with 5 powers, and to make him save the day with four of them. This was a really great class.
The next scribe is Laura.

Friday, February 26, 2010

Hi everybody! Last Friday, we spent most of the time doing the retakes for the back and forth rockets. All the back and forth rockets from last class didn't work, so the participants were allowed a retake. They didn't work the second time either. After that, we worked on the questions for the lab with our groups. The questions were on the back of the sheet. Afterwards, we learned about our next lab, to design a superhero with the program here: http://www.ugo.com/channels/comics/heromachine2/heroMachine2.asp

That's it. Thanks for listening/reading!

Friday, December 4

Hello 7th graders! Last Friday, we reviewed our acceleration math sheets. This was split into two parts. The front was easier questions, while the back was harder questions, with conversions and finding velocity or time. One example of an "easy" question was "A three toed sloth is moving at a speed of 2m/min. It takes 30 min to increase its speed to 15m/min. What is the sloth's rate of acceleration." First you needed the formula, which was acceleration=final velocity-original velocity/time or a=sf-si/t. Next, the plug. a=15m/min-2m/min/30 min. The answer is 0.43 m/min. The "hard" questions on the back were similar, apart from the fact that you needed to convert or that you needed to find something apart from acceleration. Something that may help you is this triangle, similar to the one from before.

The next scribe is Noam.